Considering refocus on PvP

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Well, with TBC having been out for a while, I'm starting to seriously reconsider a refocus back to my old PvP days. I think Blizzard really fucked up when it comes to raiding in TBC. There's too much of it, and so little of it is accessible to groups who aren't Death and Taxes or of a similar mind set. Even Reawaken, the furthest progressed guild on our server, has just recently taken down the first boss of Serpentshrine Caverns and many of the people who I've talked to about it hated the fight and the general way raiding is going.

This game has become broken by gear. Shamans used to be hybrids. Now to be effective in a single spec, you must gear and spec solely for that purpose or else you're no good at anything. I've accepted this as fact, but it still grates me. The only guaranteed way to get gear upgrades comes from the (shitty) PvP system they've set up.

If I spent all the time we spend raiding simply grinding Honour, I could have a full set of stamina + resilience gear finished in a little over two weeks. At that point, with like minded PvPers, forming a successful arena team capable of moving up the rankings would not be too hard, and the honour gear could rapidly be replaced with arena gear. I look at this and I think "why do I spend this time raiding where healing is a much more thankless job and everything seems more tedious?"

I think I'll stick it out for a few more weeks on the raiding scene hoping that this upcoming patch makes raids seem a little more enjoyable.

I've been thinking similar things about the raiding. I was reading an article yesterday about Hyjal and The Black Temple and I thought "wow, those look like fun, but will I ever see it?" Hardcore raiding guilds that have been going at this stuff full force for 4 months haven't even set foot in Tempest Keep yet, so what chance do we have?

Having put so much time into Karazhan I'm willing to keep plugging away at it pretty much as long as it takes to see the end. Its obviously possible, and we've got a solid group. But if the 25 man content takes as much time as it seems to even get to it, let alone complete it, I don't know if I'll have the patience. We'll see :)

I don't think there's anything particularly unique about TBC that changes things. We were what, barely starting BWL before the expansion? How deep into AQ did we get? Did we have any shot at Naxx?

There will always be content beyond our reach, as we are casual. Some of us more than others :)

I don't we should give up on raiding just because we'll never "finish" it - either we're having fun meeting the challenges of raiding or we're not. I personally don't find doing anything on "farm status" appealing. And I'd say downing pre-nerf Shade of Aran is pretty impressive. There is a crapload of heroic content I'm looking forward to as well.

I apologize for not being able to speak from much experience on these matters, since the raid schedule has usually been in direct conflict with my work schedule. But I do look forward to more raiding when I get a chance, and to PvP in the battlegrounds and arena as well. To "focus" on any one of these exclusively would nerf my fun. I don't want any more nerfs.

I have to say, the 3v3 games we did last night were some of the most fun I've had with PVP. I definitely would be interested in doing more things like that.

We should take a look at gear upgrades for PVP. Maybe we could help you farm the leathers for clefthide armor kits (+30 sta, +10 agi) for anyone that wants them? I just bought one off the AH for my HWL pants.

I also just need a primal nether for the engineering goggles which will be a quite large upgrade for me, especially once i get a meta gem in it. But I need to get keyed for any heroics at all first...

That arena PvP was super fun. Collecting PvP gear has actually been relatively easy for me. The basic sources of pure PvP gear are Honour rewards (epic boots, bracers, belt, cloak, and neck, rare 5 piece set, ring), Arena rewards (epic 5 piece set), Halaa PvP (rare pants, belt), and Auchindoun dungeons while controlling towers (epic ring, rare helmet, meta gem). Best bang-for-your-buck is often with the items with sockets, and, as a healer, the ability to stack +12 stam gems in them all has been really helpful. Of course, beyond these, anything with large amounts of stam can be very helpful, including a few trinkets (one of them being that Poultriezer) and some others from dungeons. My personal feeling is that Resilience is a fantastic stat, no matter what your class, but Kallikan may disagree. I think that most pieces with resilience also focus on everything else you would need in PvP including crit and stamina. Easy way to see what's out there is with your favourite item database. I like www.wowhead.com these days. Great search abilities. I have to go now, but I'd be happy to discuss this stuff further and give even more pointers. Also, I have plenty of leather and am more than willing to make those leg patches with stamina on them any time you need.

Also, Blizzard announced that Arena Season 1 will end on June 12th. Your team's rating will reset, but your accumulated arena points will NOT, and you can save up to 5000 points. Since it appears that the Arena Season 2 gear will be buffed (so that raid gear progression will not completely dominate PVP gear) you might want to hold off on any arena point expenditures for a couple weeks!

Since the servers are offline this morning I was surfing around and found something I did not know.

I knew that Blizzard made an updated version of the old rank 3 Insignia of the Horde trinket. It's got the same stun-break activation ability, but now with +20 resilience. It's also expensive, like 20,000 honor points or so, so I was passing on it since i could get more stat upgrades elsewhere.

What I learned this morning is: while the activation does the same thing, the new trinket is on a 2 minute cooldown instead of the old one's 5 minute cooldown. This might let you get 2 uses off in an arena, but more importantly, you can get a lot more uses off in a battleground.

This change makes the trinket a lot more desirable, even without the 20 resilience.

What I learned this morning is: while the activation does the same thing, the new trinket is on a 2 minute cooldown instead of the old one's 5 minute cooldown. This might let you get 2 uses off in an arena, but more importantly, you can get a lot more uses off in a battleground.

This change makes the trinket a lot more desirable, even without the 20 resilience.

Huh. I did not realize that. And here I just spent my points on a new belt and bracers. Well, I now know what my next purchase will be! 2 mins means in a battleground you'd be able to use it pretty much at least once per big battle.